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According to Lieven Bertier, segment director for workplace at Barco, hybrid work will be driven by an important trend: Bring Your Own Meeting (BYOM).
The workplace has become hybrid. But, contrary to what you may expect, the mix of home office and on-site work is more complex than just adding a virtual touch to the ways we used to work.
Various research projects have shown that the office will have to be adapted to suit the activities that employees want to perform there. Although the larger part of our meetings will have a mixed audience of in-room and remote participants, the majority of hybrid collaboration will actually be hosted from the office meeting room. In our recent Barco research, we discovered that 57% of employees think the meeting room will become the most frequently used office space.
What can organizations do to meet their employees’ needs?
Looking ahead, we will have a constantly changing mix of people working from home and in the office. Will this not make things much more complicated? How are we supposed to collaborate with each other?
This new reality has certainly made people anxious and uncertain. The past few months, we have all grown familiar with working remotely, and everything technical that comes with it, although it often came with trial and error. Now that we are heading back into the office, people will have to adapt again, but this time to collaborate in a hybrid team that includes remote as well as in-office team members.
The past lockdowns have left many of us fatigued, less connected with our organizations. Is BYOM a way to stimulate engagement again?
Our research shows that low engagement from meeting participants is the number one reason that meetings got worse in the past year. The Barco Meeting Barometer took a plunge from 17 in 2020 to -25 in 2021, signalling a growing frustration with virtual meetings. So, it’s important to make everyone feel included, part of the conversation. But then you need technology that makes it very easy and frictionless for people to connect. Dr. Sean Rintel, a Microsoft principal researcher, said that technical difficulties can be exclusionary. If you can’t hear your meeting participants and they can’t hear you, then you cannot really contribute. With BYOM, we can make everyone feel part of the conversation.
Engagement is the new gold, the new productivity. That is why the task now facing us is to design our office meeting rooms in such a way that they enable virtual participants in remote locations to feel part of the action and engage with other participants as if they are there in the room. This will become increasingly important as the workforce is split between home and office. Remote participants should no longer feel left out. I believe that solutions like Barco’s ClickShare Conference are ideal to bridge that gap, because it can provide a more immersive experience for remote participants.
57%
of employees think the meeting room will become the most frequently used office space.
What should that technology look like?
Another important trend must be taken into account. In the past few months, we have seen a big increase in the number of employees using their own laptop to join virtual meetings. The expectation is that they will want to continue doing this, even when they are back in the office. In other words, the laptop will become the centerpiece of the hybrid work experience. It’s what we like to call Bring Your Own Meeting (BYOM), in analogy with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).
The laptop offers people familiarity and ease-of-use: employees just want to step into a meeting room, connect automatically to the meeting room peripherals from their own device, use their own preferred videoconferencing software, and collaborate without wasting time. Organizations that tap into this trend will be on the path to success.
But unfortunately, our research also showed that today’s meeting rooms are not adequately equipped for hybrid work. People struggle with different set-ups in meeting rooms, especially when moving from one meeting room to the next, and they have trouble connecting to the meeting room peripherals like display, camera, speakers and mic. So, if there’s one thing organizations should focus their investments on, it’s user-friendly video conferencing technologies.
Every hybrid meeting room is built around a well-balanced, smart room ecosystem. Where different tech solutions work seamless together to give your workforce optimal collaborative experiences.
People Matters picked up a few pointers at Barco's Future-Ready Workplace virtual conference on how to create an engaged organizational culture.
According to Lieven Bertier, segment director for workplace at Barco, hybrid work will be driven by an important trend: Bring Your Own Meeting (BYOM).
Listen to this article
The workplace has become hybrid. But, contrary to what you may expect, the mix of home office and on-site work is more complex than just adding a virtual touch to the ways we used to work.
Various research projects have shown that the office will have to be adapted to suit the activities that employees want to perform there. Although the larger part of our meetings will have a mixed audience of in-room and remote participants, the majority of hybrid collaboration will actually be hosted from the office meeting room. In our recent Barco research, we discovered that 57% of employees think the meeting room will become the most frequently used office space.
What can organizations do to meet their employees’ needs?
This new reality has certainly made people anxious and uncertain. The past few months, we have all grown familiar with working remotely, and everything technical that comes with it, although it often came with trial and error. Now that we are heading back into the office, people will have to adapt again, but this time to collaborate in a hybrid team that includes remote as well as in-office team members.
Looking ahead, we will have a constantly changing mix of people working from home and in the office. Will this not make things much more complicated? How are we supposed to collaborate with each other?
Our research shows that low engagement from meeting participants is the number one reason that meetings got worse in the past year. The Barco Meeting Barometer took a plunge from 17 in 2020 to -25 in 2021, signalling a growing frustration with virtual meetings. So, it’s important to make everyone feel included, part of the conversation. But then you need technology that makes it very easy and frictionless for people to connect. Dr. Sean Rintel, a Microsoft principal researcher, said that technical difficulties can be exclusionary. If you can’t hear your meeting participants and they can’t hear you, then you cannot really contribute. With BYOM, we can make everyone feel part of the conversation.
Engagement is the new gold, the new productivity. That is why the task now facing us is to design our office meeting rooms in such a way that they enable virtual participants in remote locations to feel part of the action and engage with other participants as if they are there in the room. This will become increasingly important as the workforce is split between home and office. Remote participants should no longer feel left out. I believe that solutions like Barco’s ClickShare Conference are ideal to bridge that gap, because it can provide a more immersive experience for remote participants.
The past lockdowns have left many of us fatigued, less connected with our organizations. Is BYOM a way to stimulate engagement again?
Another important trend must be taken into account. In the past few months, we have seen a big increase in the number of employees using their own laptop to join virtual meetings. The expectation is that they will want to continue doing this, even when they are back in the office. In other words, the laptop will become the centerpiece of the hybrid work experience. It’s what we like to call Bring Your Own Meeting (BYOM), in analogy with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).
The laptop offers people familiarity and ease-of-use: employees just want to step into a meeting room, connect automatically to the meeting room peripherals from their own device, use their own preferred videoconferencing software, and collaborate without wasting time. Organizations that tap into this trend will be on the path to success.
What should that technology look like?
But unfortunately, our research also showed that today’s meeting rooms are not adequately equipped for hybrid work. People struggle with different set-ups in meeting rooms, especially when moving from one meeting room to the next, and they have trouble connecting to the meeting room peripherals like display, camera, speakers and mic. So, if there’s one thing organizations should focus their investments on, it’s user-friendly video conferencing technologies.
of employees think the meeting room will become the most frequently used office space.
57%
People Matters picked up a few pointers at Barco's Future-Ready Workplace virtual conference on how to create an engaged organizational culture.
Every hybrid meeting room is built around a well-balanced, smart room ecosystem. Where different tech solutions work seamless together to give your workforce optimal collaborative experiences.